The Internet Protocol (IP) is one of the most commonly used network layer protocols for communicating data across a packet-switched network. The popularity of IP may be attributed to several factors, including its ability to effectively communicate data for a wide variety of applications. In more recent years, IP has become widely used for real-time multimedia applications, such as digital video delivery. A system capable of receiving and displaying an IP encoded stream of video packets may be generically referred to as an Internet Protocol Television (IPTV). Service providers of IPTV networks generally guarantee a high level of reliability in the access and core networks, where, for example, fiber, DSL and cable technologies provide a reliable, error free packet stream to subscribers.
Recently, with the advent of higher speed capabilities in wireless networks, local distribution of real-time multimedia applications over wireless networks has become a desired, and sometimes preferable technique. For example, wireless in-home video distribution is frequently desired for distributing an IPTV data stream. At the same time, however, packet loss that is inherent in wireless networks often provides a less than optimal physical environment for the distribution of IPTV streams.
Since packet loss is inevitable in a wireless network environment, error mitigation schemes have been introduced to overcome the effects of lost packets. For example, many wireless based networks, such as an IEEE 802.11 wireless local area network (LAN), include a MAC level retransmission scheme; if the receiver has not acknowledged the successful receipt of a packet, the sender will retry the transmission of the packet. Even though MAC level retransmissions on a link-by-link basis are available, intolerable retransmission delays and latencies are often introduced using these schemes, degrading playback quality of delay sensitive content, such as video.
Therefore, what is needed is a system and method for recovering lost packets, while minimizing network latency and delay.
The present invention will be described with reference to the accompanying drawings. The drawing in which an element first appears is typically indicated by the leftmost digit(s) in the corresponding reference number.